Nature – Page 30 – Sheila365

A look through the window, on my way home.

I’m headed home today, after a nice, long visit in the Pacific Northwest. I’ll share a few of the sights I took in along the way…

Roadsters on the way to the airport:

On the plane I chose a starboard window seat, expecting the normal fly by with Mount Rainier on my right. It turns out we flew south of Mount Rainier, so instead I had a view of its neighboring Cascade peaks Mount Adams (in the foreground) and Mount Hood (beyond and to the left).

The Columbia River gorge, with the Miller Island to the left, where the Deschutes River joins the Columbia, and beyond it, the Dalles, and then Mt Hood in the distance.

It rained a bit while I’ve been gone, and I could see the 630.5′ high Lake Travis through the steamy haze.

We flew over my neighborhood, and I got a shot of our house! Funny.

And Big Blue’s Austin offices… quickly being swallowed up by the Domain and other new development. Looks like noone works weekends anymore.

Home sweet home.

Paddling around.

My mom’s sister is here visting, another is arriving this week. Today they’re spending the morning together catching up. So, I headed out to go kayaking near Hood Canal with Noreen, her friend Tammy and her son, Matt. I think I’m starting to sound like a broken record, but it was a BEAUTIFUL day. The water was flat and calm, and the tide wasn’t fighting us too badly.

My front row seat:

This area is full of bald eagles. Here’s a pair that were watching us as we went by:

And yes, the obligatory panorama 🙂

Again!

TGIF, folks!! Time for another gorgeous mountainscape:

And a few of mom’s favorite flowers:

Checking out the Falls.

Today I had the chance to go for a small road trip. Just a 90 minute drive, each way, up to Snoqualmie Falls. I went for it. I packed mom along with me, with her wheel chair for maximum ease of checking out each nook and cranny of this naturally beautiful place. And we were off…headed east to visit one of the most popular scenic places in Washington State. It turned out that Noreen and David were coming west over the pass from Eastern Washington from a wedding, and we were able to time it so that we met for lunch at the beautiful Salish Lodge at the falls. The flow was high, due to snow melt… swelling the falls to a thunderous level. You could feel the water falling, you could hear it beating the rocks below, and you could feel the spray 300′ up from the bottom.

I can’t tell you how pretty it was, so i’ll just share 2 shots:

and a panorama:

An awesomely beautiful day.

Friday evening on the Sound.

This afternoon we hit the Sound, again, with Fran, Art, Rebecca and Aaron. We hopped onto their boat at this beach.

Then motored over to watch a local marina’s Friday night regatta up close.

Then toodled around to see what we could see. On the left, a sea lion sunning himself on a buoy. In the background, Mt. Rainier, Blake Island and a Seattle-bound ferry.

It was beautiful out, but not necessarily warm.

And, a lovely sunset.

Memorial Day.

Wow! The weekend has zoomed by!

Today we headed over to Noreen’s to celebrate Memorial Day. On the way we stopped by the cemetery to put a flag and flowers on Dad’s grave. Cheers, Dad!

We spent the day together: Noreen, Jared & Kelsey; Fran, Art, Rebecca, & Aaron (& Jojo); Colleen & Jake; Monte, Mom & me. Brian was down with the flu, so he and Gail will have to join us another time. It was another amazingly beautiful day in the Pacific Northwest when it was really supposed to be raining.

Jared and Kelsey cooked up the burgers & dogs, and we put out all the fixings; we also had halibut that Art caught just a day ago off the Washington coast. Delicious. Afterwards most of us headed down the road for a hike to the beach. Wow, that sure was steep! We found one of the 2 geocaches we searched for along the way.

This is a panarama, looking west to the Olympics, of the beautiful beach along Hood Canal at the bottom of our 1 mile, downhill, switchback-y hike. Becca and Aaron are skipping stones and Jojo is splashing around.

Then we turned around and slogged up the way we came down and were all extremely happy when we made it back to the upper trail head. Whew-ie!!

Saturday!

I spent the night at Noreen’s last night. This morning, she finished another glass window / work of art. This one is for her own house. She does beautiful work!

Then I toodled back over to mom’s. This afternoon, I introduced her to geo-caching, and she enjoyed it. We found 3 out of 4 “park and grab” caches that we searched for on the way to the Harbor Fest downtown. She stayed in the car and pointed me to where the GPS said to look, and then we opened up the cache’s together in the car.

Then we headed downtown to take in the Harbor Fest. This is a shot of the boardwalk downtown along the waterfront.

Then, later, I headed for the airport to pick up my sweetie, who is joining me here for the last week of the month. It was fitting that my favorite mountain was poking above every horizon on my drive to the airport tonight.

Can’t help myself.

I took mom to a Dr’s appointment today. The Olympics were gorgeous.
Must. Take. Picture.

Playing through.

Fran and I enjoyed playing a round of golf this evening. Awesome!

This family of ducks wandered through one of the holes.

And we caught a glimpse of Mount Rainier looking back from the tee at 18.

It was a beautiful day for golf among the Christmas trees.

Motoring around the Sound.

Fran and Art took me for a boat ride today after work. It was a treat, the weather was nice and the Sound was like glass. Its amazing how fast you can get from one place to another by boat in these parts.

This is a view of the Olympics from Dyes Inlet, The Brothers peak on the left.

And a view of the Seattle waterfront, from just off Blake Island, a ferry, hazy Cascades in the background, and the space needle far left.

Golden chain tree.

Aka Liburnum, this tree is dripping with chains of golden blossoms. This AM the sun rise seemed to be focused squarely on this one tree. Very pretty.

And Happy Mother’s Day!

Scenes from the forest.

I took a stroll through the woods on my first day back up here in the Pacific Northwest.

Unfurling ferns.

Mouldering mushrooms.

Mossy stump.

Baby pinecones.

Aloe Vera in bloom.

Over the years, we’ve amassed quite a collection of aloe vera plants. Some plants Monte has had for 20 years or so.
This year we were surprised to see the grand daddy plant sending up a spike of flowers. Google sez this is common, even though it’s a first for us. Who knew?!

Stalked by ducks.

We enjoyed a fun raftup last night with Lori, Dave, Kurt & Kevin. The wind was slack and light overnight, and we ended up getting our anchor lines twisted. We knew that was the case, though, so we were prepared for it when we went to pull up our anchors today. We enlisted the kayak and detached the anchor rode from Nirvana entirely while Camelot pulled theirs up, untwisting them as we went along. Back on-board Nirvana, we reattached our rode and pulled our anchor up and got underway. Next time, we’ll put out a stern line. 🙂

As we headed back to the marina, the two ducks that hang out in the cove were behaving very strangely. They have been in the cove everytime we have gone out there this year, and they hang out by our boat. We’ve named them George and Gracie. This time, though, as we were motoring along, they followed us well out of the cove, swimming hard to try to keep up.

They would fall behind and then take flight and land next to us near mid-ships. Then drift back to where we were pulling the kayak, and tried to keep up again.

They repeated this over and over. After watching them do this five or six times, we slowed down so we could see what they would do when they caught up with us. And they proceeded to paddle right up to the transom.

And Gracie jumped aboard as we were moving along. George seemed a bit more reserved.

Eventually they got tired of playing with us and moved along.

…..funny birds.

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